Anyone remember the Folbigg case?

[i-need-a-martini]

Was a while ago. Kathleen Folbigg was sent to gaol for life for murdering her 4 babies over a 10 year span. They all died of suffocation or undetermined causes.

I recall the case well. She was convicted on the basis of her diary entries where she 'admitted' she felt responsible for the deaths of her babies and she felt she wasn't good enough as a mother. She also wrote about her awful relationship with her husband - he used to call her fat, he played around and she was terrified he was going to leave her.

He is the one who found her diary and handed it over to the police with an accusation of murder.

She has always said she was innocent and has appealed the case a few times. Now she has forensics experts agreeing with her.

Who knows what's true. But it will be interesting to see where this ends up.

ONE of Australia's top forensic law authorities believes the convicted child killer Kathleen Folbigg would walk free from jail if granted a retrial today - because of inaccurate evidence presented at her original trial.

Gary Edmond, a legal expert in forensic science at the University of NSW, believes a recent review of case material demonstrates that Folbigg's trial was tainted by unreliable, misleading and now outdated medical evidence.

''It is quite likely that experts provided evidence at the trial which they might not give today - and this needs to be reconsidered because you can't have someone remain in jail just because they were prosecuted at a particular point in time … especially if the science has moved on,'' he said.

''In the past few years, there have been startling revelations about problems across forensic science and medicine which should give us even more pause for what has gone in the past, particularly in controversial areas.''

Folbigg is serving a reduced sentence of 25 years after she was convicted in 2003 of murdering her children Patrick, eight months, Sarah, 10 months, and Laura, 19 months, between 1991 and 1999, and the 1989 manslaughter of her son Caleb, aged 19 days. While the causes of death were never determined, a picture emerged during the trial of an emotionally fragile mother with a personality disorder - whose damaging diary entries were interpreted as literal admissions of guilt.

But Folbigg has always maintained her innocence and Professor Edmond argues that with no scientific evidence proving any of her babies were murdered, the diary extracts alone are ''insufficient'' to keep her in jail, adding: ''They add verse but, you also have to say, they're pretty ambiguous.''

Once, four infant deaths in the same family automatically pointed to murder but as the legal academic Emma Cunliffe has demonstrated through six years of extensive research, that is no longer the case.

Doctor Cunliffe has written to the NSW Attorney-General, Greg Smith, attacking the medical research presented at Folbigg's trial as incomplete and misleading.

Dr Cunliffe cites at least eight similar cases worldwide in which mothers, in recent years, have been accused of infant murders - many of them multiple crimes. They include the Melbourne woman Carol Louise Matthey, who was charged in 2005 with smothering four children over five years. ''All the other women subjected to that form of prosecution have either been acquitted by courts of appeal or have had the evidence against them excluded by judgment,'' Dr Cunliffe said. ''Folbigg is the last one standing.''

Dr Cunliffe and Professor Edmond are not the only voices calling on Mr Smith to reopen the case. Professor John Hilton, who conducted the autopsy on Folbigg's second child, Sarah, in 1993, agrees a review is ''warranted''.

Professor Hilton, who was called by the prosecution as a witness in the Folbigg trial, said: ''We live in a changing world. Medicine and science never stand still - they progress. Now obviously, I sit on the medical and scientific side of all this … but it seems to me the conviction stood, or was based on, the diaries … which were open to multiple interpretations.''

He added: ''If you read the court transcripts, you will see that my evidence was hardly favourable to the prosecution's case.''

He added: ''While homicide was a possibility, there was no pathology evidence to support it.''

Of Folbigg's diary extracts, Professor Cordner said: ''It is well recognised that self-blame is a common response to infant death.''

While all of Folbigg's legal avenues have been technically exhausted, a spokeswoman for the Attorney-General confirmed on Saturday an application for review can be lodged under the Crimes (Appeal and Review) Act 2001.

How the case against a mother unfolded

FEBRUARY 19, 1989 Caleb dies; aged 19 days. Originally thought to have died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Now deemed to have died of suffocation.

FEBRUARY 13, 1991 Patrick dies, aged eight months. Originally believed to have died of a blockage of the airways due to an epileptic fit. Now deemed have died of suffocation.

AUGUST 30, 1993 Sarah dies, aged 10 months. Originally thought to have died of SIDS. Now deemed to have died of suffocation.

MARCH 1, 1999 Laura dies, aged 19 months. Cause of death not determined.

APRIL 19, 2001 Kathleen Folbigg is arrested at home after a two-year police investigation.

MAY 21, 2003 Found guilty of murdering Patrick, Sarah and Laura and of the manslaughter of Caleb; found to have inflicted grievous bodily harm on Patrick in 1990.

OCTOBER 24, 2003 Sentenced to 40 years' jail with a non-parole period of 30 years.

FEBRUARY 17, 2005 Sentence reduced by 10 years and her non-parole period by five years. Appeal against sentence dismissed.

DECEMBER 21, 2007 Loses a second appeal in the NSW Supreme Court. Will be eligible for release in 2028, at age 61.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/new-science-would-let-folbigg-go-free-20130202-2dr7y.html#ixzz2JmMij2Ic

[azureline**]

Mrs Matthey, 27, of Geelong, lost four children between 1998 and 2003.

Jacob was seven months old, Chloe nine weeks old, Joshua three months and Shania three years and four months.

At her committal hearing in March 2006, Mrs Matthey's defence argued there was no physical evidence of harm done to any of the children. Her lawyers said it was possible the children shared an as-yet-undiscovered gene that caused a medical condition, such as a fatal cardiac arrhythmia, that led to their deaths.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/the-mystery-of-four-infant-deaths/2007/10/24/1192941153078.html

[clair.de.lune]

Why aren't you all at church?

[azureline**]

same case. I have a grandson who had many ALTE's, the first at 5 days old. Fortunately he was in a room with 3 adults at the time and he was revived and taken to hospital, he stopped breathing so many times in his first year even I stopped panicking every time his alarm went off. Sleep apnoea.

a pediatrician from South Australia who specialised in SIDS, Dr Susan Beal, and a forensic pediatric pathologist from the US, Dr Janice Ophoven, were equally vehement homicide was the most likely explanation.

They argued that "scientific" evidence included the lack of risk factors for SIDS in some of the children; the rarity of four such deaths in one family; the troubled marriage; and the fact that the children had experienced "ALTEs" — apparent life-threatening episodes in which they stopped breathing or were found unconscious.

Dr Beal said: "ALTEs are not a predictor for SIDS; they're a predictor for (homicide)."

Justice Coldrey ruled out most of the evidence of these two witnesses.

[azureline**]

Catholics can go to Church Saturday too.

I am waiting 4 more minutes before I start mowing the pool yard.

[i-need-a-martini]

I'm with pepe - I wasn't sure either way.

The main thing I recall from the trial at the time were the parts of her diary which were made public - the words were really ambiguous.

Saying you feel guilty or that you are such a bad mother that it would have been better if your babies had never born are fairly natural emotions for a new mum and particularly one with depression.

The other thing that never 'felt' right was her husband - he had no hesitation in pointing the finger at her over and over again. I'm not saying a husband should stand by his murderous wife but I do recall he washed his hands of her almost immediately - before trying to learn the truth or even to understand what she had done.

I don't know about anything else. Maybe crikey might find some more legal transcipts.

[i-need-a-martini]

I also think it interesting that the forensic expert interviewed talks says: ''Folbigg was prosecuted at a moment in time when there was a particularly punitive account of multiple infant deaths in a given family. That moment passed.''

I think that is true. There were so many similar cases that happened at the same time. If she had been on trial today, perhaps the way they investigated it would be different.
.

[azureline**]

There is a bit in your link about the husband and why he pointed the finger, seems the police convinced him? I have to go mow.......:|

[cherry*135]

The other thing that never 'felt' right was her husband - he had no hesitation in pointing the finger at her over and over again. I'm not saying a husband should stand by his murderous wife but I do recall he washed his hands of her almost immediately - before trying to learn the truth or even to understand what she had done.

In that second link I posted that is not how her husband tells it. He was supportive of her, told the police she was a good mother  (which he said they didn't want to hear) etc.

A year after the last death, when Kathy found a new partner, then he seemed to have changed tack, found the diaries in the house and handed them into the police.

[azureline**]

That was it, I got you 2 mixed up.... well both your avis look similar 😄

[cherry*135]

Detective Bernie Ryan got in the ear of Craig Folbigg, the father of the four dead children, and told him to open his eyes. "It wasn't just always drug-addict mothers, Housing Commission women, and those type of people that killed their children," Craig later recalled Ryan saying to him. "Loving, caring mothers did it as well."

Unable to cope with the decade of loss, the Folbiggs had separated soon after Laura's death, but Craig remained supportive. Ryan, however, drove a wedge into the split, telling Craig, "it was awfully sad to see" that not only had he lost the babies, but his wife "had cleared out and cleaned me out and I was sitting in an empty house all on my own".

Craig was captured in a phone-tap that was played in court telling his sister the police were "trying to assassinate Kath's character ... What he's trying to do is trying to establish that she couldn't cope as a mother." He said police had "planted horrible things in my head" about what Kathleen had done to the children and that he'd fallen for it because he was upset with her about the separation. He was recorded in another phone-tap saying that it "narks" Ryan when he, Craig, was "waxing lyrical about how good a mother she was ... he don't want to hear that".

But the following year, Kathleen took up with another man, Tony Lambkin, and Craig's attitude shifted. Clearing out her belongings, he found one of his estranged wife's diaries. It became what we now might call a game-changer. The diary, plus another found by police, didn't amount to a confession, but together they looked bad. Very bad. Especially the entries referring to her last child, Laura, when she was three to five months old (see diary excerpts, below).